


Let Me Down Easy

by unbecomings



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: ...sorta, Coming Out, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, One Night Stands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-07-12 11:57:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbecomings/pseuds/unbecomings
Summary: Lindsey and Emily hook up in France, high on life, drunk on champagne, feeling untouchable. But nothing's ever that simple.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Go listen to Max Frost "Let Me Down Easy" and get emotional with me.

Emily is not drunk enough for this.

Contrary to popular belief, she really isn’t that drunk, and she knows that Lindsey isn’t either. A lot of them are pretty sober, they’re just _acting_ stupid drunk because they can. Kelley, though, is genuinely blasted. Ashlyn. Pinoe. Rose. But Emily is definitely not drunk enough to be dancing with Lindsey like this.

It was Lindsey who started it. She’s got a vodka soda in one hand and her other arm around Emily’s shoulders and she’s singing to CeeLo, but their faces are so close together. Lindsey’s looking right at her, she’s smiling around the words in her mouth, and Emily wants to kiss her so, so badly. She knows that she could get away with it here. Nobody would notice and if they did nobody would say anything. It’s France. They just won a World Cup. It would be fine.

She’s a coward, though, so she doesn’t, and she needs to get away from being so close to Lindsey face to face so she turns around, and it turns out that’s a mistake because Lindsey doesn’t let go of her. Now Lindsey’s arm is around Emily’s waist, and now her hand is on Emily’s hip, and now maybe Emily is grinding on her a little bit but it’s not like they’re the only ones. It’s not like Pinoe hasn’t already been grinding on everyone she sees. It’s not like that.

But it is like that. Lindsey slides her hand into the front pocket of Emily’s jeans. Emily is overheating, and it’s worse like this even though she can’t see Lindsey’s face, because she can feel a lot more of Lindsey and it would have been easier just to resist kissing her. Now she knows if she turns around she won’t be able to. 

“Em,” Lindsey says in her ear, “I’m gonna get rid of my drink.”

“Kay,” Emily says, and still doesn’t turn around. Lindsey uses the hand in Emily’s pocket to pull Emily back against her, and all of the breath leaves Emily’s lungs as if she’s been punched.

“Come with me,” Lindsey says, and Emily’s just proud her knees don’t buckle.

-

She throws her drink away somewhere. She’s not really paying attention. They’re not far from the hotel and she knows her way around, enough anyway, enough to get them back, but they barely make it outside before Emily grabs her wrist.

“Where are we going?” she asks, like she doesn’t know. Like this wasn’t all her idea, like she’s surprised all of a sudden that Lindsey’s hot and bothered after all that. Anyone would be. Anyone, after winning the biggest trophy in their sport, and drinking after being sober for months, would react like that to physical contact like that. It’s science.

“Back to the hotel,” Lindsey says. She holds eye contact with Emily for as long as it takes for Emily to get it, and she watches the realization dawn on her, the way the crease between Emily’s eyebrows deepens and then disappears, how her mouth falls open just a little bit. Lindsey wants to kiss her, but she won’t do it here, outside in Lyon. She’s not that far gone, she remembers what it’s like.

“Unless you don’t want to,” she offers, and Emily jumps, letting go of her wrist.

“No,” Emily says, “yeah, I mean, yeah. Let’s--yeah.”

Lindsey controls herself until they’re in the elevator, and then she looks at Emily and Emily looks at her and they lurch toward each other. Emily has a hand fisted into the front of Lindsey’s shirt when Lindsey kisses her, but Lindsey doesn’t have time to decide what to do with her hands before they reach their floor. It’s very convenient that they’re roommates--and maybe that’s why this is all happening--but it’s not convenient that Emily leaves everything all over the floor. Lindsey trips over a pair of her shoes and Emily giggles, reaching for the lights.

Lindsey stops her, feeling a spike of panic at the thought of doing this in the light, of Emily seeing that much of her. Emily doesn’t question it, and Lindsey ignores the flicker of confusion that crosses Emily’s face in favor of kissing her again, because now that she’s started to she can’t get enough.

She’s still not sure what to do with her hands. Emily’s hands are on her chest, over her collarbones, and Lindsey’s instinct is to drop her hands to Emily’s hips. She regrets that immediately. She’s never put her hands on a girl’s hips like that before and it hits her like a ton of bricks, the way Emily’s waist curves, the way Emily fills her hands. Somehow her thumb ends up beneath Emily’s t-shirt, and when she touches Emily’s skin she panics. 

To fight away the fear she pulls away from the kiss to breathe, and the way Emily looks at her changes everything. Her gaze is unfocused, her hair is a mess, and her eyes are on Lindsey’s mouth. She wants this. She wants _Lindsey_ , and Lindsey knows she’s never experienced this before, not really. She can already tell the way Emily wants is different than the way a man wants.

Lindsey takes a half a step back and pulls her shirt over her head. Emily does the same, then reaches for Lindsey by the front of her jeans and pops the button, all while tilting her head up, looking for another kiss. Lindsey kisses her, distracted by Emily tugging her zipper down and the sudden feeling that things are going too fast. To combat it she fumbles with Emily’s jeans, and Emily breaks the kiss to unzip and pull them down over her hips. For a moment Lindsey wishes she had let Emily turn a light on, but she can see enough. 

Emily almost tips over trying to get out of her skinny jeans, and Lindsey reaches out to catch her. Emily ends up grabbing into her bicep, and when she kicks her jeans away she cups Lindsey’s face in her hands and kisses her again. This time she opens her mouth into the kiss, and Lindsey’s brain shuts off completely. She wraps her arms around Emily’s waist, all the way around her just because she can, and when Emily takes a few steps back towards one of the beds, Lindsey doesn’t hesitate to follow. 

She’s not sure how long they make out on the bed for. It’s a while. When she breaks the kiss for real to take a breath, it’s like Emily knows she’s starting to get lost, because Emily reaches for Lindsey’s hand and pulls it around behind her back for the clasp of her bra. Lindsey struggles with it but she gets it open, and when she turns back from tossing the bra away she reaches instinctively to touch all the skin she’s uncovered, trailing her fingertips along Emily’s sternum to feel her heartbeat, and then Emily’s breasts. She’s floored, which is stupid because she has her own and she’s touched them, but it’s different, Emily is different, the way she sucks in a breath and squirms a little under Lindsey’s palms. 

There are so many places she wants to put her mouth, but she settles for Emily’s neck, until she gets distracted by Emily’s hands roaming over her shoulders. They feel too big to her. She can’t believe she’s doing this. She knows better. But Emily’s skin tastes like champagne and every dumb fumbling thing that Lindsey does with her hands makes Emily make a sound, and Lindsey, for the first time in days, feels like she’s good at something, like she’s necessary. 

“Linds,” Emily murmurs against her mouth, “take your pants off.”

-

Emily feels greedy as soon as it leaves her mouth. She’s so afraid that anything she says or does could be the thing that breaks them out of this trance and makes Lindsey run from this. She’s convinced, when Lindsey turns away, that that’s what’s happening. Instead, Lindsey swings her legs over the edge of the bed and wriggles out of her jeans, and Emily swallows hard, trying to process everything that’s happened in the last twenty minutes.

Lindsey is a really good kisser. Lindsey is so much bigger than her. Lindsey _wants_ this.

When she surges back up onto the bed and braces herself with a hand on either side of Emily’s head, Emily reaches up to kiss her. She’s done this enough times to know that too much eye contact can ruin it, especially if they shouldn’t be thinking too hard about it. If Lindsey bails now, she might die. 

“Em,” Lindsey says, and Emily has to kiss her again. It’s the second time Lindsey has called her that tonight and the first time she’s heard it in ages, maybe ever. 

Lindsey only kisses her back for a second before she pulls away. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says. 

“You’ll figure it out,” Emily jokes, “you’re the Great Horan.”

“Shut up,” Lindsey laughs. Emily doesn’t say that Lindsey could breathe on her and she’d fall apart. She has to maintain at least a little dignity. Instead she bends her legs so that she can press her feet down into the mattress, and Lindsey settles between her thighs. 

They both hesitate. Emily has no idea what Lindsey’s waiting for, but she takes the time to soak it in, the image of Lindsey laying on top of her, resting her weight on her elbows, looking at her. It’s all the things Emily never let herself imagine. For a second Lindsey looks like she’s going to speak again, but she doesn’t. Instead she shifts all of her weight onto one elbow and watches her own hand as it slips between Emily’s legs. 

Emily bites her lips. She needs to keep still and quiet and let Lindsey concentrate, but she wants her hands on Lindsey again, she wants to tell her how hot she is, knowing that as soon as she opens her mouth she’ll never shut up. Lindsey is blushing so hard that Emily can tell in the half light through the blinds. 

Somehow, even though Emily has spent months trying not to think about Lindsey’s hands, she’s surprised by how long Lindsey’s fingers are. Lindsey is slow and careful, though, starting just with the one and letting Emily adjust, and Emily closes her eyes the second that Lindsey looks up. She can’t do eye contact. She’s sure Lindsey can’t either, even if she thinks she wants to. 

Lindsey gets a rhythm going, but she’s still hesitant, like she’s not sure she’s doing the right thing. Emily wants to unpack that but she doesn’t have the brainpower, so instead she reaches for Lindsey, touching her shoulders again. Lindsey kisses her stomach, and Emily does squirm a little bit because she can’t help it. She wants more. She wants Lindsey to kiss more of her. She wants Lindsey’s hands all over her. She wants to flip them and—

And Lindsey pulls away. Emily considers crying. She also considers touching herself, but that feels rude. She’s trying to come up with what she’s supposed to say next when Lindsey lurches up and kisses her again, and then it’s hard to be upset with the warm, solid length of Lindsey’s body pressed against her, even if she’s not going to get off like this. 

She’s surprised when Lindsey’s hand is between her legs again all of a sudden. This time it’s just her fingertips, and it takes her no time at all to figure out where she should be applying pressure. Lindsey starts making effortless circles with her index and middle fingers and Emily can’t control herself anymore, not with Lindsey kissing her neck. She ends up clawing at Lindsey’s upper back and breathing through her nose to keep from groaning out loud. 

It’s not very long after that. Lindsey lifts her head to watch and Emily avoids it by burying her face in Lindsey’s neck when she comes, her knees clamping down against Lindsey’s hips. Lindsey rolls off of her a little too early, but Emily just closes her eyes and breathes, and tries not to think. 

“Sorry,” Lindsey says, “I’ve never—“

“Shut up,” Emily says, “you’re good. You’re hot.”

They’re lying close enough together that she can feel the heat of Lindsey’s skin where their upper arms are almost touching. Emily is still twitching, curling her toes into the messed-up comforter. 

“You think I’m hot?” Lindsey asks softly, and Emily squeezes her eyes shut again. When she reopens them, she rolls over onto her knees and leans over Lindsey. 

“Lindsey,” she says, “stop talking.”

-

Lindsey has never been comfortable being looked at. The only time she’s ever welcomed anyone watching her is on the field, and she’s always been the type to do whatever it took for sex to be over as quickly as possible because she just hates being _watched_. When Emily rolls them over and kneels between her thighs she forgets what it feels like to be self conscious.

It’s something about the way Emily’s looking at her. 

It’s different. It’s not even that it’s not a hungry look, because it is, but it’s...Lindsey doesn’t have a word for it, but it makes her feel good. It makes her want to be touched. 

Emily hesitates with a hand hovering over Lindsey’s bra, but when Lindsey doesn’t stop her she touches Lindsey over the cotton. Lindsey closes her eyes and tries to understand how Emily can be so good at this even with the bra still on. She exhales when Emily’s hand moves across her skin, over her chest, gently pushing the straps of her bra over her shoulders.

Lindsey arches up off of the bed to unclasp her bra, and when she tosses it away she feels vulnerable again. Emily’s eyes dart down but they come back up, Lindsey was not expecting Emily to kiss her again, but she does, sliding her hands across the skin she’s uncovered but gently. Lindsey bites down on Emily’s bottom lip and Emily smiles against her mouth. For two seconds Lindsey thinks she has the upper hand still, even on her back, until Emily rolls her thumbs across her nipples and she forgets to breathe. 

Emily doesn’t gloat. She kisses Lindsey’s jaw and her neck, and Lindsey winds an arm around Emily’s waist and threads her other hand into Emily’s hair, tugging her hair tie out and throwing it away. Emily never wears her hair down but Lindsey loves it, and she’s caught up in that and Emily’s mouth on her throat and forgets, for a moment, that Emily has hands. 

She remembers when Emily’s hand slides into her underwear. She gasps, and Emily pulls away, her brow creased in concern. Lindsey dislodges her just long enough to writhe out of her underwear and kick them away, and then she takes Emily’s hand by the wrist and brings it back, and Emily kisses her and Lindsey loses track of everything, of her own body and Emily’s and time and breathing. 

When she can focus again, she realizes that Emily’s somehow combined both things that _she_ did and is doing them at the same time, with one hand, She’s so good with her fingers that Lindsey’s panting, clawing at the bedspread. Emily’s other hand rests on Lindsey’s stomach, and part of Lindsey wants to reach out and drag her back, wants Emily on top of her. The other part of her doesn’t want to interrupt Emily’s rhythm, because she’s swiping her thumb in just the right way--in a way that Lindsey didn’t even know _worked_ for her--and that part wins out.

For a moment she thinks she’s only going to be able to get close, but then the smallest thing sets her off: Emily strokes across her stomach with her thumb, and maybe it doesn’t mean anything or maybe it’s supposed to be comforting, but either way Lindsey loses it. She realizes distantly that the sound she makes is somewhere between a gasp and a sob, but she’s zeroed in on little things, on Emily holding her in place with her hand on Lindsey’s inner thigh, on the smell of the detergent in the pillow when she turns her head and how she’s hot and cold all at once.

Nobody has ever made her come like that. She’d never say it, she’s too embarrassed to do more than formulate the thought, but it’s true, and it terrifies her. 

Emily clears her throat. She takes her hand back and Lindsey takes a deep breath, almost laughing when Emily pats her leg like they’re on the field again. It’s all so- absurd. 

“I’m gonna get some water,” Emily says, “so I don’t die on the plane tomorrow.”

“I want some,” Lindsey says, and Emily brings it to her without chirping her, which is how she knows that things really are weird. Lindsey’s legs are still Jello when she sits up to drink. She’s not watching Emily, but she’s also not _not_ watching while Emily slips into a pair of sweats and an oversized t-shirt. She’s definitely not staring at Emily’s hands, watching her pull her hair back up into a bun. 

“Night,” Emily says without looking at her, and Lindsey ignores the twinge of disappointment when Emily gets into the other bed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily and Lindsey face a tough question: If you fuck in France do you fuck in real life?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for all the nice comments! I'm so glad people are enjoying reading because I'm having a blast writing these idiots. I promise I will fix what I break. :)

Emily doesn’t dream. She wakes up first, with her phone alarm, and when she rolls over Lindsey is asleep, clothed, in the other bed. 

“Hey,” Emily says. Lindsey doesn’t wake up, so Emily picks up a pillow and chucks it at her head. When Lindsey sits up, she looks confused, with her hair sticking in every direction and the imprint of her pillow on her right cheek. Emily wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and kiss her and fall back asleep. 

Sex was a mistake.

“Get up,” Emily says, “we’re gonna be late and get shitty seats on the plane.”

“What’s a shitty seat on a private jet?” Lindsey mumbles, and Emily scrambles to her feet to avoid looking at her any longer, in her stupid soft Arsenal t-shirt.

“In the back,” Emily says, “next to the bathroom.”

That’s where they end up anyway. 

Other than the two or three of them that are somehow asleep (Rose included), everyone keeps changing seats throughout the flight. Emily sticks by the window and doesn’t move, and ignores Lindsey finding a niche between Tobin and Christen. It’s weird for them not to be together, but it’s not like they need to be together every second. As long as nobody notices Emily doesn’t care, because she’s tired and the chances that she’ll fall asleep on Lindsey’s shoulder are too high for her liking, anyway.

This time yesterday that wouldn’t have mattered, but now it hurts. The thought of physically being close to Lindsey again feels like an emotional sunburn, like she’d gotten too close, and she’s hoping it’ll fade and she won’t be this tender about it after they’re all clean and sober and back with their clubs. It’s not like they talked abuot their feelings--they just had sex.They’re probably not even the only ones.

She’s thinking about that when Kelley slides in next to her.

“So,” Kelley says, “you guys hooked up, huh.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emily squeaks, but she knows she’s bright red. 

“Uh huh,” Kelley says, “it’s fine, Sonny, it happens all the time. The team knows it, Jill knows it, it’s not a big deal. Or...it doesn’t have to be.”

It sounds like a threat. Emily wants to cry.

“Did she tell you?” she croaks, and Kelley looks at her, really looks at her. She softens immediately, throwing an arm around Emily’s shoulders. Across the plane, Emily makes eye contact with Lindsey, who sort of half-smiles and then turns back to Uno with Christen and Alex and Tobin.

“Lindsey?” Kelley asks, following Emily’s gaze. “Oh, it _was_ Lindsey!”

“Shut up,” Emily hisses. And then, “I thought you knew. You said you knew!”

“I knew you hooked up with someone,” Kelley says. She touches Emily’s neck, and Emily reaches up to where Kelley’s looking.

“Oh, fuck,” Emily mumbles, pulling her hoodie up around her neck.

“It’s not that bad,” Kelley says, “it’s like, a 2/10 as far as hickeys go, but I know what I’m looking for. Anyway, like I said, nobody cares.”

“I care,” Emily murmurs. She really is going to cry. She closes her eyes and pulls her hood up all the way, but Kelley doesn’t let go of her shoulders to let her sulk against the window.

“That’s why I’m here,” Kelley says. “Listen, shit is super weird right now. You’re probably hungover, we’re all on a plane, we haven’t been apart for like, months. Just trust me. Enjoy the next couple of days and then go home and detox. It feels like things are never gonna be normal again, but they will be.”

Emily doesn’t tell her that she’s wrong. If anyone would know, it’s probably Kelley. But she keeps thinking about Lindsey’s hand in her hair, holding her in place by the back of her head. There’s no way to go back to normal after that.

Thinking about going home does help, though.

She falls asleep and when she wakes up again, Rose is asleep next to her. Lindsey peeks over the top of her seat. The plane is way quieter now, like they’ve all tired themselves out. She’s not sure how much time they have left.

“Hey,” Lindsey says softly. And then, “you were snoring.”

“Shit,” Emily says, “sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Lindsey says.

Neither of them says anything for a few seconds. Emily scratches her nose with the back of her hand, pulling the sleeves of her hoodie over her fingers.

“I’m doing a crossword,” Lindsey says.

“Wow,” Emily replies, “you’re really bored.”

“My phone died,” Lindsey says, “come back here and help me, you’re smart.”

Emily climbs carefully over Rose to join Lindsey, hyperaware of the hickey she’s trying to hide. She’s adjusting her collar, trying to cover it, when Lindsey looks. Emily can tell when Lindsey sees it, because she blushes, just at the tops of her cheekbones. 

“Five letter word,” Lindsey says, “clue is, ‘place for a belt.’”

“Loops,” Emily says.

Lindsey shakes her head.

“Last letter is ‘t’.”

Emily pulls her knees up to her chest. She wonders if she left a mark too, but she thinks she’d remember doing that. She remembers everything. She wishes she remembered less.

“Waist,” she says, leaning over to get a look at the board. Lindsey sniffs and writes it in.

They make it to New York without talking about it. Eventually Rose wakes up and joins them, and that helps, too. Emily is almost convinced that Kelley was right when they all start buckling in for landing. Nobody tells them to expect any turbulence, but on their descent it gets bumpy, and Lindsey goes progressively paler, until one particularly big bump has her reaching for Emily, clutching her forearm.

“Hey,” Emily says, “it’s okay.”

“I always take Xanax before,” Lindsey mumbles, “but I forgot.”

“We’ll be on the ground in fifteen minutes,” Emily says, “tops. We’re good.”

She opens the window a crack and leans down so she can see over the clouds.

“See?” she says, pointing, “there’s the city.”

Lindsey leans over so she can see too. Emily leans back to let her, and ends up watching Lindsey’s face, which was a mistake. She vividly remembers how those lips feel. Less than 24 hours ago, that nose was pressed against her neck. Her stomach flips with the next bump, but not because of the plane.

-

They start drinking again the second they touch down. 

The champagne honestly helps, if only because they’re not alone together anymore. Sure, they’re on the same float, but Mal and Rose and Jess and Sam are there, too. In the light of day, outside in the sun in New York fucking City, Lindsey can breathe again. It’s a parade for _them_. 

Kelley joins their float at the last second and Emily clings to her the way she always has. This time it makes Lindsey feel something. Mostly she’s afraid Emily told Kelley about last night. Not that she doesn’t trust Kelley, or doesn’t trust Emily, just that she wants to know what happened in that conversation and whether Emily’s regretting it, and the fact that Kelley might know those things while she doesn’t- it bothers her. Enough to throw the champagne back like a shot.

“Whoa,” Sam says, “slow down, buddy.”

“Fuck that,” Rose says, tossing her own paper cup of champagne back, “we’re champions, bitches!”

Kelley and Emily are attached at the hip the whole time. Lindsey does her best not to notice. It’s not like Emily’s avoiding her, just that all of a sudden she’s using Kelley like a security blanket. Lindsey is drunk enough that she wants to pull Emily aside and tell her not to worry about it, that she’ll never make a move again, that she knows now, but she’s not sure what she knows. She’s not sure if she wants to laugh or cry. She knows for a fact she never wants to touch a man again.

By the time the City Hall ceremony is over, Lindsey has the worst headache of her life.

“Hey,” Tobin says, looping an arm around her waist, “you look, uh, not great. You want some Advil?”

“Yes,” Lindsey says, sagging against, her, “God, yes. Thank you.”

“No,” Christen says, “not--have you eaten anything? You have to eat first.”

So somehow Lindsey finds herself being mothered not by her actual mother, who is also here in New York somewhere, presumably, but by Tobin and Christen in the back of a limo on the way to yet another plane. There’s a whole bunch of them in the limo, but Emily must be in the other one. With Kelley.

“Here,” Christen says, sliding in next to her, “two hot dogs, sorry, I think they’re feeding us on the plane but if you want the Advil now you should eat first.”

“You put ketchup on them?” Tobin asks, feigning disgust.

“And mustard,” Christen confirms. Lindsey, who usually gets them with nothing at all, has eaten them both by the time Tobin and Christen are done talking about it. 

“You good?” Tobin asks her. It occurs to Lindsey briefly that she could get back at Emily by telling Tobin about last night like Emily definitely told Kelley, but she’s too tired, and there’s half the team with them in the limo that could overhear. 

“I’m okay,” she says instead. Christen places a comforting hand on Lindsey’s knee.

“It’s crazy, right?” she asks, “How fast it all goes from being like the coolest dream ever to an actual nightmare. But we’re almost done. We’ll get all dressed up and win some awards and then you can sleep it off and go home for a bit.”

“Detox,” Tobin says, “I’m gonna go surfing. Chris is gonna surf too.”

“I am not,” Christen says, “but I will watch.”

“I’ve never been,” Lindsey says. She’s thinking about Denver, about the promise or two or three days without Emily even in the same state, and how much she hates the idea.

“You should try it sometime,” Tobin says, grinning, “you never know.”

Lindsey feels unwieldy in her red pantsuit, which is supposed to be sexy. She sits while a girl whose name she doesn’t know does her makeup and her hair, and when they line up to hit the red carpet she ends up with Rose and Sonny and Mal, where she should be.

Sonny looks good. Everyone looks good, but Sonny--she’s in a pantsuit too, only hers looks sophisticated, black and white, and it’s cut really deep. Lindsey has the distinct thought that she regrets not spending more time with her mouth there.

“You look nice,” Emily says.

“Hottie,” Mal agrees, smacking a kiss on Lindsey’s cheek. “All my friends are certified baddies.”

“I dare you to make that your Instagram caption,” Rose says. Lindsey thinks she might have caught Emily looking at her, but when she glances over Emily’s staring into the middle distance, totally zoned out.

When they finally take a seat, Allie leans over the back of Lindsey’s chair, dangling a hotel room key in one hand. 

“I switched with Sonny,” she says, “so me and Alex are roomies and you and Sonny are roomies.”

“Oh,” Lindsey says, taking the room key, “cool.”

Allie _winks_ at her. It might mean nothing, because Allie is and always has been weird, but Lindsey has a feeling this is something more than that. Emily’s hickey has long since been covered up by concealer, but if Kelley knows it’s possible everyone else does, too. Not because Kelley would say anything, but just because they’ve all been together for so long by now that Lindsey is sure they have a hive mind.

“Thanks pookie,” Allie says, “I owe you one.”

“I actually think I hate that more than The Great Horan,” Lindsey mumbles. Next to her, Rose rolls her eyes.

“That’s because you love it when we call you The Great Horan,” she says.

Lindsey remembers, all at once, Emily saying it last night. It feels like a thousand years ago, but it wasn’t. And she’d laughed. It had been cute when Emily said it.

“I hate it,” Lindsey says, “and all of you.”

“Aww,” Rose says, and leans over to rest her cheek on Lindsey’s shoulder.

She gets to spend some precious time with her family and it’s soothing, nice not to think about Emily or soccer or anything else for a half an hour. That lasts until her mom smooths her hair out of her face and says, “you must be exhausted.”

Lindsey is past the point of being exhausted and is jittery again. Saying that seems like a bad move, though. 

“Yeah,” she agrees instead. 

“Go sleep,” her mom says, “and we’ll see you on the plane tomorrow.”

Not everyone’s full family had flown to LA. Lindsey knows how lucky she is, but she is exhausted and she knows she’ll be with them for a couple of days now, and she thinks if anyone asks her if she’s okay she might start crying. Her parents are so, so proud of her. She’s pretty sure that winning a World Cup makes up for being into girls. _Pretty_ sure...but she doesn’t want to find out. 

“Okay,” she says, and she forgets until she gets back to the hotel that Allie has given her a gift. 

-

The shower helps so much that Emily stays in it for way too long. Her fingertips are pruny by the time she turns the water off and opens her eyes. She feels clean again, finally, and like what Kelley said is true. She had a good night. Lindsey looked so hot. Two things can be true. 

She’s decided that it is possible for her and Lindsey to go back to their separate but occasionally converging orbits. There’s a word for that, she learned it in astronomy at UVA, but she doesn’t remember anymore. She’s not dumb enough to think there won’t be times Lindsey’s gravity pulls her in, but with her hair washed and her legs shaved she is confident her own gravity is enough to pull her back out again. They’ll be fine. Everything is totally under control. 

She believes this while she wraps herself in a towel and she believes it while she brushes her teeth and she believes it until she opens the door and Lindsey is sitting on _her_ bed in that pantsuit with her hair let down and her heels kicked aside. Emily clutches the towel closer to her chest, suddenly very aware of how naked she is under it, and of her wet, stringy hair. 

“Why are you here?” she asks, and it comes out totally unchill, accusatory, _shrill_ even. Lindsey looks up from her phone. They’ve given her a smoky eye and Emily wants to drop kick whatever makeup artist made Lindsey look so...in control. 

“Um,” Lindsey says, “Allie made me switch with her so she can spend more time with Alex. I figured someone had told you?”

Emily shakes her head. She’s not surprised, now that she thinks about it, but she’s also not ready. 

“Sorry,” Lindsey says, looking back down at her phone, “I can ask Rose to switch if you want me to go.”

“No,” Emily blurts. When Lindsey looks up she reminds herself of her own gravity. She’s got her own orbit. They will be fine. 

“I want you to stay,” she manages, and that seems good enough for Lindsey. The corners of her mouth turn up. It’s almost—but not quite—a smile. 

“Hope you didn’t use up all the hot water,” Lindsey says when she stands up. She bumps Emily’s shoulder when she passes and it feels normal, like things were before. 

“It’s the Ritz,” Emily says, “if you need more hot water, let them know and they’ll allocate more geotherms to the room.”

“Oh my God,” Lindsey says, muffled from behind the now-closed bathroom door, “you fucking nerd.”

Emily changes into another t-shirt and sleep shorts and scrolls mindlessly through Twitter, trying not to think about the pantsuit or Lindsey’s hands or anything else. She doesn’t lay down because she knows she’ll fall asleep if she does, just sits on the edge of the bed where Lindsey was before and waits. She’s not even sure what she’s waiting for, she just doesn’t want to be asleep when Lindsey comes out of the bathroom. That feels really important. 

When Lindsey does open the bathroom door again, Emily wishes she had gone to bed. She’s just standing there in a towel. 

“I forgot to bring my clothes in,” Lindsey mumbles. She’s bright red, and she shouldn’t be. They’re teammates and roommates and it’s not a big deal. Except that it is, because when Emily looks at her she feels this _pull_ , and it’s even worse because she knows that Lindsey doesn’t feel the same. But how could she expect any different? 

Lindsey steps out of the bathroom. She doesn’t pass Emily’s bed. She comes directly to Emily and stands in front of her, close enough that Emily has to tilt her head up to look into Lindsey’s face. She’s about to say something when Lindsey reaches out, toying with the hem of Emily’s t-shirt, slipping her hand just underneath it but not touching Emily, not yet. Like she’s waiting for permission. 

“I can do better,” Lindsey says, rubbing the fabric of Emily’s shirt between her thumb and forefinger. Emily has no idea what she’s talking about, but she looks serious, like she really means it, and like she really wants Emily to understand. 

“I want to prove it,” she adds, and then Emily gets it. She’s never doubted for a moment that Lindsey will make it to Tokyo, or that she’ll play. And Emily knows that next time around Lindsey will play the games that matter, even if Lindsey doesn’t. 

“You will,” she promises, touching Lindsey’s wrist. She’s not sure what else to do with her hands. She knows what she wants to do. 

Lindsey starts to lean down, and Emily’s mind goes blank. 

“Are you gonna kiss me?” Emily asks stupidly, and Lindsey freezes. 

“Um,” Lindsey says, “I was gonna try.”

Emily swaps their places so fast she doesn’t even think about it. She climbs into Lindsey’s lap the second Lindsey is sitting on the edge of the bed and leans down to kiss her. The sudden realization that Lindsey wants to do this is way too much for her to maintain any kind of self control. Lindsey places her hands on Emily’s hips, under her t-shirt, and Emily frames Lindsey’s face in her hands and really, _really_ kisses her, the way she was afraid to last night. 

Lindsey is the one to open her mouth to the kiss, and Emily responds eagerly, readjusting so her knees are further up on the bed and she can rest her full weight in Lindsey’s lap. That way she can focus, pushing her hands through Lindsey’s wet hair while Lindsey sucks at her bottom lip. It’s such a good, deep kiss that Emily forgets where they are, and that Lindsey is only wearing a towel. She breaks the kiss to take a breath, and Lindsey keeps her eyes closed for a moment. 

Emily drops her hands to Lindsey’s shoulders. They hadn’t taken this kind of moment last time, and Emily’s suddenly not afraid to be this close. Lindsey wants to do this. Her eyes are bluer than Emily remembers when she finally opens her eyes. Emily almost says something stupid about it before Lindsey lifts Emily’s shirt over her head. 

Emily isn’t wearing a bra, because she was thinking she was just going to bed. Lindsey hesitates, then kisses Emily’s neck and her chest, and Emily holds onto Lindsey by the back of her neck and her shoulder. Lindsey is plenty enthusiastic for someone who’s new to breasts that aren’t hers. That’s the most coherent thought she can come up with while Lindsey’s mouth moves across her skin. 

Lindsey’s hands are so big on her ribs, and Emily loves it, loves how comfortable it is letting Lindsey hold her in place. She trails her fingers down to where the towel is barely holding up and tugs it until it falls open. Last time the lights were off, she remembers, so this is new, all of it. Lindsey gently pushes Emily off of her lap. Emily stands in front of her, unsure, watching Lindsey’s eyes move over her body until Lindsey reaches out and tugs Emily’s sleep shorts down over her hips. Emily shimmies out of them. 

-

Emily is mind-bendingly hot. Lindsey can’t believe they’ve been naked in locker rooms so many times without her noticing. It feels criminal now. It’s not like Emily is the only girl she knows with abs, but Lindsey has never let herself even think about touching another girl like this. She reaches out to touch Emily’s stomach, and when she glances up at Emily’s face she’s expecting at least a little smugness but there’s nothing, just Emily blushing with her lips parted. 

She’d always felt like men looked like aliens with all their clothes off. Emily just looks good.  
Lindsey fights the urge to panic when Emily reaches out to undo her towel the rest of the way. If she gets to look at Emily, Emily gets to look at her. It’s only fair, and, she realizes as she shrugs the towel away completely, Emily would never make her feel bad about how she looks, even before they started doing this. 

She scrambles back onto the bed all the way, propping herself up against the headboard and pillows, and Emily follows her. 

“Do you want me to get the light?” Emily asks, hesitating on her knees.

“No,” Lindsey mumbles.

“It’s okay,” Emily says, “hold on.”

She turns on a lamp and turns off the rest of the lights. Lindsey relaxes immediately and Emily knee-walks to her and swings her leg over Lindsey to settle in her lap, placing her hands back on Lindsey’s shoulders. Lindsey would be lying if she said she hadn’t noticed that Emily likes her shoulders. She’s always hated her shoulders. It’s always been hard to find shirts that fit her in women’s sections, that don’t hug her shoulders too tightly or end up too short or too baggy around the waist, but Emily likes her shoulders so much that Lindsey likes them, too, at least for a moment.

Lindsey kisses her again, and Emily ends up with one hand on the back of her neck. Lindsey’s hands settle on Emily’s ribs, and when she strokes with her thumbs Emily laughs against her mouth.

“If you tell anyone I’m ticklish,” Emily says, “I’ll kill you.”

“You can try,” Lindsey says against her lips, and then they’re kissing again, a deep, serious kiss that ends in their teeth clashing when they both turn their heads in the same direction. It’s not awkward, though, it’s hot that Emily wants her this badly. Lindsey has been trying to avoid putting her hands on Emily’s hips again because she doesn’t want to seem like she can’t think about anything else, but she can’t think about anything other than how perfectly Emily’s hips fit in her hands, so eventually she caves. 

The second she puts her hands on Emily’s hips, Emily breaks the kiss and exhales against her mouth. When they kiss again Lindsey is distracted because Emily is rocking in her lap and it feels _so_ good. Lindsey has done this the other way around, been the girl in someone else’s lap, but she’s always hated it. She’s always felt too big and she’s never been able to do with her hips whatever it is that Emily’s doing now.

She’s acting purely by instinct when she drops her hand to Emily’s thigh. Her thumb rests just at Emily’s inner thigh, until she works up the courage to move her hand. She’s not sure about it until Emily reaches for her and guides her hand, and Lindsey is completely, one hundred percent sure that it’s the hottest thing that’s ever happened to her, until her hand is between Emily’s legs and Emily makes a quiet, desperate sound that’s even hotter. Lindsey is still getting used to what it’s like to touch someone else like this, but it’s pretty clear what Emily wants.

This is really different than last night, where Lindsey had to think about what she was doing, how quickly she was moving her hand, the angle her fingers were at. This time, Emily’s in control, and that’s even better. Emily presses their foreheads together and uses her hands on Lindsey’s shoulders to steady herself as she rides Lindsey’s fingers, and Lindsey doesn’t think her other hand on Emily’s lower back is actually helping, but she’s not sure what else to do with it. That and she can feel Emily’s muscles move under her palm and she loves that, she loves all of it. Emily bites her lips and digs her fingernails into Lindsey’s shoulders, and there’s nothing Lindsey has to do but watch and keep her hand still.

Eventually her wrist starts to cramp but she refuses to move. Emily kisses her and it’s a mess, and Lindsey thinks she can tell that Emily’s close even though she’s still new to all of this. She wants to help, and she’s just bold enough to catch Emily’s chin between her thumb and forefinger and turn her head away so that she can find the hickey she left the night before and make it worse. She’s not thinking about it when she does it, just thinking that it’s there already, but the second her teeth hit Emily’s skin Emily gasps. Her hips jump and she buries her face in Lindsey’s neck and shakes like she did last night, only this time she’s making quiet little noises that Lindsey wants seared into her brain forever.

As much as Lindsey likes that Emily clings to her like this, it occurs to her that she’d like to be able to really see Emily’s face next time. She’s caught on the ‘next time’ when Emily slides out of her lap and pushes her down into the pillows.

-

Emily’s legs are still shaking when she hovers over Lindsey to kiss her. With Lindsey lying down Emily feels bigger than she is, and the confidence helps. She wants to make Lindsey feel like she feels, like she’s never going to come down from this high. It occurs to her that Lindsey has only been with guys before, and while Emily has never slept with one she’s heard enough about how most of them are in bed to guess at the sort of sex Lindsey’s used to. 

She can do better than that. She can do a lot better than that. 

She rests on one elbow and rests her other hand on Lindsey’s stomach when she kisses Lindsey again, tangling their legs together because she can. Lindsey is warm and soft but also so solid, and Emily wants to touch every inch of her, from the muscle on her arms to her strong, thick legs, but she doesn’t want to make Lindsey wait too long, either. Maybe afterwards. For now, she kisses Lindsey until Lindsey is shifting under her palm, trying to lift her hips without being obvious. Emily has had sex with enough girls to know what’s happening here, to know that Lindsey wants her to touch but doesn’t want to say so. 

Instead of sliding her hand down she slides it up. Men don’t know what to do with breasts either, she doesn’t have proof but she knows it as a fact, deep in her mind. She takes her time, trailing her fingertips across Lindsey’s chest, then ducking her head to press a kiss against the skin just beneath her breast before she moves her hand. The last time she did this Lindsey gasped, and she does it again this time, arching her back to press up into Emily’s palm. Emily turns her hand over and brushes against Lindsey’s nipple with the back of her hand just to see if Lindsey will make more noise this time and she does, even though it’s a quiet one because she’s biting her lips. 

Emily replaces her hand with her mouth and Lindsey groans and it’s the best noise Emily has ever heard, including every single chant in Portland and the sound of the crowds in France. This time there’s no hair tie in the way of Lindsey getting her hands into Emily’s hair, and she does, both of them, dragging her nails gently across Emily’s scalp like she _knows_ Emily loves it. Then it occurs to Emily that Lindsey does know. She’s played with Emily’s hair before, platonically, on the couch. It doesn’t feel platonic anymore. Maybe it never was. 

She thinks about that when she kisses her way along Lindsey’s sternum and ribs, when she trails her mouth along Lindsey’s stomach. She scrapes her teeth across Lindsey’s hipbone and resists the urge to leave a trail of hickeys from her hip down her inner thigh. They’re not there yet—well, Lindsey’s not. In fact, Emily isn’t even sure if Lindsey is okay with what she’s planning, and that makes her lift her head, resting her hands on Lindsey’s thighs. Lindsey is bright pink and looks like she badly wants to put all her clothes back on. 

“You okay?” Emily asks, and Lindsey nods fervently. 

“Has anyone ever—?”

Emily doesn’t ask the full question. She doesn’t have to and if she does they might both be too embarrassed to go on, but she’s curious and the answer matters, because if she’s going to be the first she wants to take care of Lindsey even more. 

Lindsey hesitates. And then she shakes her head. 

“Do you want me to stop?” Emily asks, and Lindsey’s fingertips brush across her temples. 

“No,” Lindsey says, “I want—“

She doesn’t look like she knows how to finish her sentence, but she does look like she knows what she wants. 

“Okay,” Emily says, spreading her fingers out to take up as much space on Lindsey’s thighs as possible, “yeah. Okay. Cool.”

Emily gently presses Lindsey’s knees apart and settles between her legs, and when she glances up into Lindsey’s face she thinks she’d like to stay there forever. She doesn’t tease, just takes a breath and tugs Lindsey the last few inches down the mattress to her mouth and closes her eyes. Lindsey tenses up and Emily can feel her thighs flexing under her hands. She goes slow, not wanting to be overwhelming, and Lindsey holds onto her shoulders. Lindsey eventually props her feet up on the bed and Emily tilts her head so that she can bring her fingers into the mix, too.

“Fuck,” Lindsey gasps, and Emily fights the urge to smile because she has better things to do with her mouth. 

Emily keeps steady, trying to match up the timing of her tongue and fingers, and Lindsey is so clearly trying to keep her hips still that Emily almost lifts her head and says not to bother. She doesn’t, but she redoubles her efforts until Lindsey is trembling, and when Lindsey finally comes she almost kills Emily between her thighs and Emily has never been happier to be so close to death. 

She pulls her hand back to pry Lindsey’s legs away from her face so that she can breathe, but she doesn’t take her mouth away until Lindsey reaches down to touch her face. When she sits up, Lindsey closes her eyes, and Emily starts to panic again. 

“I’ve still gotta brush my teeth,” Lindsey says. 

“Yeah, well I need to wash my face,” Emily says, “so, dibs.”

When Lindsey blushes, she laughs, and Emily’s panic subsides. After she brushes her teeth she slips back into her pajamas and under the covers of her own bed. She closes her eyes and sees Lindsey again reaching down for her. She’s not sure she’ll ever be able to think about anything else. She’s trying very hard not to think about how badly she wants to wrap herself around Lindsey, and then Lindsey comes out of the bathroom and slides into bed with her, leaving the other bed empty. 

Emily doesn’t roll over because she’s afraid Lindsey will leave if she does. Neither of them makes a move to touch, and Emily falls asleep like that, dreaming of pressing her face into Lindsey’s neck again. 

She wakes up hours later and immediately checks the alarm clock on the side table, praying that she has more time to sleep. She needs to be up at seven, her flight leaves at ten. It’s three, and she closes her eyes again as soon as she reads it, relieved beyond comprehension. Then, before she’s able to drift off again, Lindsey’s arm tightens around her waist, and she realizes what she hasn’t processed yet: she woke up with Lindsey spooning her, and she didn’t even blink, because it feels right. It feels normal, like they’ve been doing it for months, Lindsey breathing quietly against Emily’s pillow, their legs close to touching. 

The next time she wakes up it’s to her alarm and she’s alone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily and Lindsey have some time apart to process things, with a little help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for commenting! I love seeing peoples' reactions and knowing that you're engaged and stuff, it makes me happy. :)
> 
> I don't really know for sure what happened with Lindsey in France, but I know she said she lost her love of the game for a couple of reasons she never elaborated on, and I know that talking about her time in France makes her very sad.

The flight to Denver is the longest of Lindsey’s life. It’s barely over two hours and she’s exhausted enough that she should be able to sleep, but she can’t. She’s next to the window with Mike asleep in the aisle seat next to her and their parents across from them, and she can’t talk over them and doesn’t know what to say to them anyway. She tries to watch Netflix, but she can’t focus. Even if she puts on music she ends up missing whole songs.

Should she have left a note?

Probably. Her phone is connected to Wifi but Emily hasn’t texted her. Lindsey doesn’t know what time Emily’s flight back to Atlanta was. Presumably, later than her own. Selfishly, she wishes Emily _had_ texted her to make sure she was okay, but she doesn’t deserve a check-in. She doesn’t deserve anything from Emily. It’s a big part of why she bolted in the first place.

What scares her is how easy it was to do. Stepping over the line between them being friends and them being whatever they are now happened in a heartbeat. She can’t even remember exactly when she decided to dance with Emily like that, or what she was thinking--she wasn’t thinking at all. It was so easy that it happened on its own, and she let it, even though from the second Emily kissed her she knew she couldn’t be who she was pretending to be.

She drafts a text to Emily six times before she gives up and turns her phone off completely.

Despite her better judgment she spends a lot of the flight comparing Emily to everyone else she’s ever kissed or slept with. They’re all men. It makes sense logically that she hasn’t felt exactly the same about any of them as she does about Emily, because she’s never had a best friend that was a man, and she’s never hooked up with any of her male friends, and she’s never won a World Cup before. But the sex is a whole different thing, a whole animal of its own, and that’s what she can’t wrap her mind around. 

She had kissed a girl once. In France--not Lyon, in Paris, on the bank of the Seine, in the middle of the day on a Thursday. An off day. It was a big enough city that she felt relatively safe even with her heart beating out of her chest. There are _two million_ people in Paris--what were the chances anyone would see her and know who she was? 

Big enough.

She still doesn’t know if someone actually saw her or if they just guessed. She knows what she heard and she knows what was said to her. She never forgets it anymore. There were a few years where she did, but back in the States, surrounded by the kinds of players that PSG would have buried, she can’t forget. There’s a reason Tobin never went back. They both know it and they’ve never spoken about it but Lindsey knows that Tobin heard the things she heard. The difference is that Tobin is good enough to ignore it.

The only person who knows any of that is Emily, and Emily still doesn’t know about the other girl, whose name Lindsey has forgotten by now. She knows about the diets and the regular hair appointments and Lindsey is sure she’s guessed about the men that she used to surround herself with. It was _easier _. Even if they weren’t the right kind of men, if they were men, it was easier, it was expected, it kept people from talking about anything but what she could do with the ball at her feet.__

__In Portland it’s easy not to see or be seen with anyone but her teammates. Portland loves soccer enough on its own. The Cascadia rivalry is enough. The Thorns’ Championships are enough. Lindsey scores as much as she can and then some and that’s enough. But the threat that it could all disappear in a second is too real, and the idea that she could ruin Emily’s life in the process makes it even worse._ _

__“Hey,” Mike says, just waking up, “open the window.”_ _

__When she does and he leans over to look outside she thinks about Emily again and wants to cry._ _

__-_ _

__“You look like trash,” Emily’s sister says._ _

__“Well we’re twins,” Emily says, “so nice self-drag.”_ _

__“I’m not hungover,” her sister says._ _

__Emily wishes she was just hungover. She wishes she could chug a bottle of Pedialyte and go about her day. She needs to learn the puke-and-rally for heartbreak in the next four days. Instead of saying anything else, she throws up a peace sign and pulls her hoodie up over her head again._ _

__Under her sunglasses, pressed against the window of the plane, she might be able to get away with crying, if her family falls asleep. Instead she closes her eyes and tries to sleep knowing that the sleep she got last night, even though it was deep, is nowhere near enough to make up for everything that’s happened this week. She has her arms crossed over her middle, and in the seconds before she drifts off she can almost mistake it for Lindsey’s arms around her, the way she had woken up at three in the morning._ _

__She should have gotten into the other bed. She shouldn’t have let Lindsey kiss her to begin with. She should have stayed out in Lyon and danced with her friends and gone out in New York and found some other, non-Lindsey girl to kiss. It wouldn’t have been hard to do. But she doesn’t want another girl, and she was perfectly happy before everything happened with Lindsey, and she wouldn’t even be _lying_ if she said that. She really was so happy just to be Lindsey’s friend and her roommate. Living with her crush was, mostly, bearable. Now it won’t be. Not because Emily can’t stop herself from thinking about being close to Lindsey, but because she can’t stop remembering the feeling of Lindsey looking at her like she was something she wanted._ _

__“Fuck,” she mumbles under her breath, because she is definitely crying. She turns her body toward the window, which is still open on the bottom, and watches the clouds pass._ _

__-_ _

__It’s hard for Lindsey to breathe. She knows it’s partially just the altitude, that she’s not used to it anymore now that she spends most of the year in Portland, but she can’t help feeling like some of it is more than that. She can’t focus on anything, she’s tired but too restless to nap, and staying in the house feels like she’s navigating a minefield. She doesn’t trust herself not to open her mouth and say too much, and she doesn’t want to disturb her parents, who are so happy. They keep answering phone calls congratulating them and her, and showing her the pictures they took of her and the venues, and talking about France as if it’s a place she would ever, ever want to go back._ _

__“I know you like Portland better,” her dad says._ _

__“It’s not even comparable,” she says, before she catches herself. She has to word her next sentence carefully. “It’s more fun,” she says, “the soccer is more fun.”_ _

__“You can always go somewhere in the offseason,” her mom says, “right?”_ _

__“The Olympics are next year,” Lindsey says, “I’m not thinking about offseasons, I won’t have one until 2021.”_ _

__“Emily went to Australia,” her dad rolls on, like he hasn’t heard her, “you could do that.”_ _

__“You’d get a nice tan,” her mom laughs._ _

__“I’m not thinking about it,” Lindsey repeats, and prays that neither of them saw the way her face twisted when Emily’s name was mentioned. They love Emily. They don’t know a lot about her, but what they do know, they like. How could they not? And she’s ruined that, too._ _

__“I bet you don’t want to think about soccer at all for a minute,” her dad says. The truth is she doesn’t want to think about anything else. She never should have in the first place--if she was more focused about the game she would be less inclined to get herself into trouble. That’s always what she was taught to do at PSG. The second she let anything else creep into her life she ruined it the way she never could ruin a good chance at a goal. She was made to do one thing well and that’s all she wants to do._ _

__“I’m gonna go for a run,” she says, even though she can’t get a full breath in._ _

__“Shouldn’t you rest?” her mom says, and Lindsey shrugs away her concern._ _

__“If I don’t do at least a little something active I could hurt myself next time I play,” she says, which is at least partially true. What she really wants is to feel like she’s successfully run away from something._ _

__She makes it a half a mile before she starts crying. She runs through it until her chest and throat are aching and she can’t see straight, and then she keeps running because she doesn’t want to stop and wipe her eyes, and then she trips._ _

__She catches herself on her hands. It scrapes up her palms and one knee. She’s lucky she didn’t break either wrist and she knows that even before she sits on the curb and cries some more over how stupid she is._ _

__Her ankle throbs._ _

__She waits until she stops crying and then she does the only thing she can think of: she calls Mal._ _

__By the time Mal picks her up, Lindsey has dried her stinging eyes and picked the gravel out of her knees. Mal rolls up in her mom’s car, and she pulls over and puts the hazards on and leaves the car to come help Lindsey up even though she can get up on her own just fine. Like countless times before, she grasps Lindsey’s wrist and helps pull Lindsey to her feet. Then she takes Lindsey’s face in her hands and really looks at her, and Lindsey almost cries again before Mal pulls her into a hug._ _

__“We’re going to Starbucks,” Mal says. “Yes, I know it’s two PM, but I’m jet lagged.”_ _

__“Me too,” Lindsey says._ _

__“Well obviously,” Mal jokes, “you fell asleep in the middle of a run.”_ _

__Lindsey laughs snottily and has to wipe her face again. Mal is one of maybe three people she’s comfortable seeing her this fucked up, and one of the others is Emily. The second she has that thought she wants to cry again and has to take a deep breath and press her head against the seat. Mal gives her a worried look, but she doesn’t try to talk until Lindsey has a cup of fruit and an iced coffee in front of her._ _

__“Okay,” Mal says, “so what’s up? Because I’m pretty sure this isn’t about playing time.”_ _

__Lindsey shakes her head._ _

__“I don’t care about that,” she says. Then she corrects herself and says, “I’m in control of that.”_ _

__“So,” Mal says, and then she leans back and waits._ _

__The Starbucks is actually across the street from Lindsey’s old high school. She’s pretty sure Mal doesn’t know that, but when she looks she can see the soccer field she grew up playing on. Ten years later France feels just as big and terrifying as it did at fifteen. There’s nothing romantic about it. She wishes she could tell her younger self that._ _

__“I’m gay,” Lindsey says, and it comes out on a sigh, barely loud enough to count as a sentence. She keeps her eyes on the field when she says it because it won’t change no matter _what_ she says. Mal is silent, and eventually it makes Lindsey uncomfortable enough that she turns her head to see how Mal has reacted. _ _

__Nothing has changed at all. She’s wearing the same vaguely concerned, open expression that she was wearing before, and at first Lindsey thinks that Mal hasn’t heard her. Then, when Lindsey opens her mouth to speak again, Mal beats her to it._ _

__“Okay,” she says, and Lindsey bursts into tears again. Lindsey hands her napkins until she stops leaking like a faucet, and when Lindsey looks at her again she’s definitely more concerned._ _

__“Did something happen?” Mal asks, “are your parents—?”_ _

__“No,” Lindsey says, “I mean, they don’t know, I’ve never said it out loud before.”_ _

__“Oh,” Mal says. Lindsey watches the way Mal’s expression changes and takes another deep, shaky breath._ _

__“Hey, that means a lot to me, that you told me,” Mal says. “I mean, it’s not about me obviously just, I’m glad you felt like you could tell me, ‘cause you can tell me anything. And I think you’re badass, no matter what.”_ _

__“You haven’t heard what I’ve done yet,” Lindsey says, and Mal frowns._ _

__“I’m pretty sure you could kill someone and I wouldn’t care,” Mal says._ _

__“It’s worse than that,” Lindsey says miserably, but Mal is probably right. She was Lindsey’s friend before she was Emily’s friend. Lindsey doesn’t like to think about it like that, but she’s the one who created the awkward divide to begin with._ _

__“I doubt that,” Mal says gently._ _

__Lindsey chugs a quarter of her coffee before she continues._ _

__“I slept with Emily,” she says miserably, and Mal’s face lights up. She leans over the table on her elbows._ _

__“Was she _bad_?” she asks, and Lindsey blinks. _ _

__“What?” she asks, “no, come on.”_ _

__Mal sits back in her chair and holds her hands out._ _

__“Then don’t see the problem,” she says, “that sounds awesome.”_ _

__Lindsey drops her face into her hands. In a perfect world everything would be as simple as Mal thinks it is--Lindsey would go back to Portland and kiss Emily in the morning over their coffee and very little would change. But that’s not the world that they live in._ _

__“Mal,” Lindsey says, “I _like_ her.”_ _

__“Hey,” Mal says, reaching out to pat Lindsey’s hand, “that’s a good thing! She’s had a crush on you forever.”_ _

__Lindsey lifts her head abruptly enough that she feels a little dizzy._ _

__“You knew?” she asks, verging on hysterics._ _

__“I thought _you_ knew,” Mal says, and Lindsey has to drink more of her coffee to calm down._ _

__When she can think clearly again she sits back and takes a deep breath. She tries not to think about Emily directly, it’s like looking at the sun. As long as she thinks about Emily sideways she can handle it. She knows that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but her._ _

__“How long?” she asks, and Mal blinks at her until she clarifies, “how long has she had a crush on me?”_ _

__This time it’s Mal’s turn to deflect using her coffee. It makes Lindsey nervous that she doesn’t want to answer the question. The idea of Emily having a crush on her for a long time, for years maybe, makes Lindsey feel like she’s falling off a cliff, like everything she knew about her life in Portland with Emily wasn’t real._ _

__“You should ask her that,” Mal says, “not me.”_ _

__-_ _

__Somehow, Emily gets through the day. There are enough people, there’s enough commotion surrounding her, that she can forget for a few hours. There’s not a single moment of silence until after dinner, when her dad falls asleep in his armchair and her mom goes back to her knitting and Emma is...somewhere else. For the first time all day nobody is talking to or about Emily, and she hates it. She hates the quiet. She realizes she’s been filling the silence all day, afraid of this moment, and now that it’s here she can feel the panic creeping in, crawling up her arms and settling in her chest, at the base of her throat._ _

__It’s eleven PM. She goes out into the back yard, the little makeshift pitch her parents built for them when she was eight, and juggles a soccer ball for thirty minutes. Nobody comes to look for her, and once her legs are tired she lays on her back and closes her eyes. She runs through the list of everyone she knows in Atlanta and ticks them off, one by one._ _

__Jane is in Houston.  
Most of her high school friends have moved away or haven’t spoken to her in years.  
Nobody she knows from college is further south than DC._ _

__But there is Kelley._ _

__“Hey,” Kelley says, “miss me already?”_ _

__“Kel,” Emily says, “it got worse.”_ _

__“Oh buddy,” Kelley says, “okay, listen, I’m gonna text you an address and you meet me there in an hour, deal?”_ _

__The address is a Waffle House halfway between them. Emily pulls in a little after midnight. Kelley’s car is one of the only other ones in the parking lot, and she leans over to wave jauntily at Emliy through their windows. Emily doesn’t even have it in her to smile, she just blinks and then unbuckles her seatbelt and steps into the oppressive humidity._ _

__Kelley joins her and leans against her car without saying anything, just looking Emily over. Emily is starting to regret calling Kelley, realizing that Kelley can probably see it all, even the things that Emily doesn’t want to see. She just has that look about her. Her eyes are too bright._ _

__“Sonny,” Kelley says, “babe, you got it _bad_.”_ _

__“Please,” Emily says, “I know, don’t make fun of me, just tell me how to kill it.”_ _

__“First thing’s first,” Kelley says, taking her hand and holding it up like a boxer in a ring, “waffles.”_ _

__Emily has her mouth full by the time Kelley tries to talk to her about it again. She’s been mindlessly chattering about being home until now, talking about her houseplant that survived months on its own that Emily is sure can’t actually be alive. And then, abruptly, halfway through Emily’s first waffle, she rests her chin in her hand and goes for the kill._ _

__“So,” Kelley says, “your thing for Lindsey got worse.”_ _

__Emily frowns at her._ _

__“It’s not a question,” Kelley says, “keep eating, you can explain in a second. Here’s what I do know. No matter what happened, it’s never too late to go back. You can always go back to being friends if you were friends first. Just look at me and Chris.”_ _

__Emily almost chokes. She has to wash down her waffle with some Diet coke before she can speak, and when she does she’s not sure she even wants to, but it comes out regardless._ _

__“You and _Christen_?” she asks. Picturing Christen with anyone but Tobin is extremely weird, but especially with Kelley._ _

__“Oh, come on,” Kelley says, “you seriously didn’t know? I mean, I know you went to UVA, but I definitely thought you were smarter than that.”_ _

__“We can’t go back to being friends,” Emily says, ignoring that comment, though it occurs to her she could use Becky as proof that UVA isn’t UNC._ _

__“You can’t,” Kelley says, quirking an eyebrow, “or you don’t want to?”_ _

__Emily swallows. She pushes her hash browns around with her fork and doesn’t answer right away. She tries to imagine Kelley at her age and fails, even though she was vaguely aware of Kelley at Stanford and definitely aware of Kelley’s trajectory with the national team. As a forward who was converted later in life Emily always looked up to Kelley, but she didn’t expect them to be similar off the field, too. Maybe Kelley has a point. Maybe Emily needs to stop being such a little bitch. She’s not in college anymore, she can’t just block the girl on Snapchat and drop out of corporate finance and hope they’ll never run into each other again._ _

__There are things she needs to do as an adult and a teammate. She’s seen relationships tear apart team dynamics--she saw what happened in Washington with Lohman and Sanderson, she remembers Ella and Erin and Tancredi, and she doesn’t want that for her or for Portland or, most importantly, for Lindsey._ _

__“What do you want?” Kelley asks. “If you were making a list of what you want out of this situation, in order, what’s your preferred outcome?”_ _

__She sounds like a therapist, but people go to therapy for a reason. Most of them don’t go to therapy past midnight in a Waffle House, but they are in Georgia, so it’s probably not as unlikely as she thinks._ _

__“I want to be her girlfriend,” Emily mumbles._ _

__“Okay,” Kelley says, “and--you don’t have to answer this part, but you need to know what you want that to look like, for you. Let’s say she doesn’t want you to be her girlfriend.”_ _

__“She doesn’t,” Emily says. She shoves a too-full forkful of smothered, covered hash browns into her mouth. If Lindsey wanted to be her girlfriend she wouldn’t have dropped off the map completely after last night. God, her days have been too long._ _

__“You don’t know that yet, I don’t think,” Kelley says, “but let’s assume you do know that and she doesn’t want to be your girlfriend. If that’s the reality you’re living in, what do you want?”_ _

__Emily doesn’t hesitate._ _

__“I want things to go back to normal,” she says. When Kelley makes a face she says, “not normal, whatever, it was never normal, I can own that. But I want things to go back to how they were before. When we were friends and roommates and...whatever I felt was like...not her problem.”_ _

__“Okay,” Kelley says, sitting back with her arms on the top of the chairs on either side of her, “tell me everything.”_ _

__Emily tells her everything. Well, almost everything. She spares Kelley the details and the things she wants to keep for herself, but she tells Kelley more than she’s ever told anyone else. She’s never actually really told anyone about her feelings for Lindsey. The only people who have ever guessed, as far as she knows, are Caitlin and Rose. Caitlin in Australia, while they were drunk, slinging an arm around Emily’s shoulders and asking her directly, and Emily being drunk enough to say yeah, and neither of them bringing it up ever again. Rose as Emily’s roommate for camp, watching Emily harass Lindsey on Twitter and accusing her of having a crush that Emily denied but knew Rose had spotted a mile away. It’s different telling someone on purpose._ _

__She met Lindsey when they were sixteen. They were in camp together and Emily was still playing as a number ten and she spent four days feeding Lindsey passes that Lindsey scored on almost every time like it was nothing. Lindsey didn’t talk to her much; Emily was sort of new and Lindsey had her group of friends, including Rose, who was better than Emily and not particularly nice to her at the time._ _

__She followed it when Lindsey went pro. In college she stayed up too late more than once watching PSG games, tracking Lindsey’s movements on the ball. Tobins, too, but Lindsey was always interesting to her in a different way, and when they ended up in Portland together Emily was so psyched to get to play with a generational talent, and of course Lindsey didn’t remember her or even particularly like her for almost a whole year, but something about having to work for Lindsey’s friendship made it better._ _

__“When did you know you were into her, though?” Kelley asks._ _

__Emily finishes her waffle before she answers. The truth is that she’s not really sure. She can’t pick out a moment of realization because it wasn’t really like that for her. She’s sure there was one, but it wasn’t groundbreaking. It was like noticing any of the little mundane things you notice about yourself daily, like noticing that you had a bruise on your shin. You knew afterwards that the bruise was there, but the moment you recognized it wasn’t important._ _

__She can’t remember a time before she took this much pride in making Lindsey laugh. She can’t remember exactly when she started noticing the line of Lindsey’s shoulders tapering into her waist or the color of her eyes. She really can’t._ _

__“I guess our second year in Portland,” she says._ _

__“And you never said anything to her?” Kelley says._ _

__“No,” Emily says, “why would I? She’s straight. Or I thought--I don’t know. It’s complicated. I guess she’s not straight. But I also don’t really think that matters. I guess I always knew she didn’t want to date me.”_ _

__“Not because you’re undateable,” Kelley says._ _

__“Yeah,” Emily says, “thanks, mom. No, I know. The whole situation was just always fucked up. Like, you don’t date your teammates. I did it in college and it was a mess.”_ _

__“You’re not in college anymore,” Kelley says, “go ahead and try to tell Ashlyn and Ali that you don’t date teammates.”_ _

__“I’m not Ashlyn or Ali though,” Emily says, “they’re...they have their shit together.”_ _

__“God,” Kelley cackles, throwing her head back, “I cannot believe we live in a universe where anyone thinks that either of those nutjobs has their shit together, but babe, I can promise you they did _not_ at twenty four.”_ _

__“It has to be that,” Emily says weakly, “otherwise there’s another reason she doesn’t want to date me.”_ _

__“Hon,” Kelley says, “there could be lots of reasons, and none of them have anything to do with you. But have you talked to her about it?”_ _

__Emily bends her straw until it snaps. Then she puts it in her mouth and chews on it._ _

__“No,” Kelley says, “or else why would we be at Waffle House at one am?”_ _

__“Hey,” Emily says, “WaHo is bumpin’.”_ _

__“You should talk to her,” Kelley says, crossing her arms over her chest. “She shouldn’t just keep sleeping with you like this if she’s not...you know. So if you talk to her and she doesn’t want what you want, it’s healthier for it to stop now before it becomes, like, a capital ‘i’ issue.”_ _

__Emily takes her straw out of her mouth. She’s feeling a little better, mostly surprised she hasn’t cried yet. She leans forward with her elbows on the table and Kelley gives her a suspicious look._ _

__“Was Christen a capital ‘i’ issue?” Emily asks, and Kelley rolls her eyes._ _

__“Yes,” Kelley says, “and she was a capital ‘i’ issue for Tobin, too. Falling in love with someone is always a capital ‘i’ issue. Even when it’s a girl you met in an elevator in her office building and not a girl on your college soccer team that lives down the hall.”_ _

__Emily thinks long and hard about that. Kelley is watching her think about it, and Emily vividly remembers Kelley launching herself onto the stands in France to kiss her girlfriend like it was nothing out of the ordinary, as if she didn’t care that literally millions of people were going to see and know her on a different level than before. That’s the kind of issue she wants._ _

__She almost texts Lindsey when she gets home. She has to resist the urge to send her a meme or say hi or ask how her flight was. Only once she’s back in bed in the dark does she admit to herself what she didn’t admit to Kelley: this is already a capital ‘i’ Issue, and she needs to fix it before the victory tour, before it affects their chances at an Olympics together._ _

__Emily wants to stand on a podium with Lindsey in Tokyo more than she wants Lindsey to love her back._ _


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shockingly, being back together in Portland magically fixes nothing.

Emily gets back first. Lindsey is afraid to go home and takes a detour to get coffee first even though she’s buzzing and doesn’t need the caffeine. It’s a place they’ve gone together more than once--not that there are many places in Portland that she’s been to without Emily--and sitting there alone feels powerful, even if not in a good way. 

Emily always liked her. It’s not hard for Lindsey to accept that. It was never really a surprise, and if she’s honest with herself she did know, just like Mal thought she did. That makes what she did to Emily even worse, because she _did_ know that Emily liked her, and she still slept with Emily twice, knowing that Emily put her on a pedestal.

Emily deserves a girlfriend. A normal girlfriend, one who’s comfortable being gay, one who will post sappy pictures of her on Instagram and hold her hand walking down the street and kiss her at the stadium after a game. If Lindsey tried to be that girl it would ruin both of them forever and she needs to figure out a way to say that.

Instead, when she does get home, and Emily is tucked into the corner of the couch playing something Lindsey doesn’t recognize on the Switch, she fumbles with her words. Emily looks up when she walks in the door with her suitcase and pauses her game, but she doesn’t get up. She hesitates, when a month ago she would have leapt over the back of the couch to tackle Lindsey or at least would have said something funny.

“Hey,” Emily says hoarsely.

Lindsey wonders if she’s been crying and contemplates sleeping on Tobin and Christen’s couch for the rest of her life.

“Hey,” Lindsey says. 

“Hey,” Emily says again, “wait, dude, you went to Sterling without me?”

Lindsey blinks, placing her almost-empty iced coffee on the counter.

“Sorry,” she says.

“I’m just busting your chops,” Emily says, “just joshin’.”

“No,” Lindsey says, taking a deep breath, “like-- I’m sorry.”

Emily doesn’t react right away. The expression on her face isn’t one that Lindsey has ever seen before, and it doesn’t last long enough for Lindsey to figure out what it is, before Emily is smiling at her. The smile doesn’t reach her eyes, and that’s what Lindsey is fixated on when Emily speaks again.

“Hey,” she says, “it’s cool, no worries. We were drunk and horny, it doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

Lindsey wants to cry. She can’t tell yet if it’s relief or something else and she’s not sure she wants to unpack it anyway. She definitely doesn’t want to unpack her suitcase, since they’re leaving for Utah in two days.

“What are you playing?” she asks, and Emily looks down at her switch.

“I don’t even know,” she says. “Wanna play Mario Kart?”

“Loser buys dinner,” Lindsey agrees, and when Emily looks offended she lets herself believe that things really can go back to normal.

-

They have a full day together before they leave for Utah. Emily wakes up feeling optimistic after sleeping without dreaming and makes her smoothie bopping along to her most recent playlist. Lindsey joins her after a few minutes, blinking the sleep out of her eyes as she pads into the kitchen in her shorts and sleep shirt. Emily looks up and is hit with a wave of longing so hard that it feels physical, like it could literally knock her onto her ass if she doesn’t hold onto the counter.

She wants to kiss Lindsey so, so badly.

“Is that the Miss Kelley?” Lindsey asks, nodding at the smoothie, “it’s a different color.”

“Oh,” Emily says, “no, I’m trying to get into kale.”

“Dude,” Lindsey fake gags, then laughs.

“It’s good for you,” Emily says, “I don’t know, I felt like a change.”

She wants to be the kind of person who eats kale regularly and moves on from heartbreak after a normal, healthy amount of time. She’ll start with the kale. When she takes a sip of the smoothie she’s actually surprised it’s decent, although not as good as the one Kelley taught her to make. There’s a weird, nutty aftertaste that she knows is from the kale, but she feels like a real human being and that makes up for it.

“Wanna try it?” she offers, and Lindsey waves her off.

“I’m good,” Lindsey laughs. Her hair falls into her face while she’s making coffee, but her hands are too busy to push it back. Emily has to resist the urge to reach out and do it herself. It would be so easy to tuck Lindsey’s hair behind her ears and move on. Maybe Lindsey wouldn’t even care. The kale is not working.

“I might go to the stadium early,” Emily blurts, “my hammies are really tight so I was thinking I’d get some extra mobility stuff in before.”

“Oh,” Lindsey says, “okay that’s cool, we can leave whenever.”

Emily clears her throat.

“I was gonna just walk or whatever,” she says, “by myself, but I’ll see you there, you don’t have to come early.”

“Oh,” Lindsey says again, more quietly.

So, her feelings are hurt. Emily sort of expected that. She wondered if she would feel vindicated at all by Lindsey feeling even a dull echo of what _she’s_ feeling, but of course she doesn’t. She wants to take it back immediately. She wants to drive around town aimlessly for hours with Lindsey and the windows rolled down and music blasting. 

“Yeah,” Lindsey says, “I’ll see you there, I’m moving kinda slow anyway.”

They don’t speak again before Emily leaves, and she tries not to let herself feel too guilty. The apartment is just big enough for them to move around each other in silence. She can’t remember if they were ever quiet before, but they must have been. It’s just that it feels difference when she knows the silence is her fault. 

She keeps repeating what she told Lindsey over and over again until the words all melt together. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It doesn’t. Have to be. A big deal. 

She hears it in her head to the rhythm of her heartbeat when she gets to the stadium early and does 3 sets of sprints up and down the stairs. She hears it monotone under the hum of the massage therapist’s voice while she gets her quads and hamstrings unlocked and loose. Every word is punctuated by the sounds of soccer balls hitting cleats all practice, over and over. If it’s still a big deal when they get to small area games it’s because Emily is making it into a big deal, not because it has to be. 

In a last ditch effort to keep Lindsey from getting to the goal in their last drill of the session, Emily slide tackles her. She does it without thinking about anything but the fact that she needs to win. She gets all ball and Lindsey jumps over her anyway, but as soon as it registers Emily realizes what an idiot she is. Lindsey is blinking down at her with hurt in her eyes that only lasts long enough for Emily to see it. Then she reaches down for Emily’s hand, clasps Emily’s wrist and pulls her to her feet. 

“Sonny,” Mark says, “no tackling in practice.”

She can’t understand the laughter in his voice or the scattered giggles of her teammates. It’s  
not funny at all. 

“Sorry,” she says, “I know, my bad.”

“It’s okay,” he says, “you’re still in compete mode.”

She wishes that were all it was. 

Nobody says anything to her about it, not even Lindsey. They cram into the same ice bath with Ellie, who chatters away while Lindsey nods and Emily scrolls through Instagram, and Emily only stays the minimum amount of time before she bails to shower. Lindsey always stays longer, and usually Emily stays with her, but her skin is crawling being so close.

Just like in LA, the shower helps. By the time Emily climbs into the car with Lindsey, she feels almost normal again.

“Sorry about the tackle,” she says.

“It’s fine,” Lindsey laughs, “I saw it coming. You get that look in your eye.”

“A _look_ ,” Emily repeats incredulously, and Lindsey grins as she pulls out of the parking lot.

“Like...murder,” she explains, and Emily has to laugh.

By the time they get back to the apartment, they’re both exhausted. Emily hadn’t slept well in Atlanta, and when they settle onto the couch it hits her all at once. Lindsey looks tired too, though Emily would have known better than to say anything about the bags under her eyes even before they slept together. 

God dammit. She was trying not to think about that.

“You look like shit,” Emily says, nicely.

“Thanks,” Lindsey says, but she’s laughing, “you look like shit, too.”

“Still hungover,” Emily admits, “not sure I’ll ever not be hungover.”

“I don’t think that works,” Lindsey says, “like, as an English sentence.”

“Whatever,” Emily says, “I’m so--”

“Exhausted,” Lindsey finishes, and Emily nods. Lindsey stretches out on the couch sideways, resting her head against the arm. Before, Emily would have picked Lindsey’s feet up and put them in her lap. This time she settles on the other end, in the other corner, with two inches between where Lindsey’s feet end and her thigh begins.

She puts on HGTV and pulls a blanket over her legs. Lindsey pulls the other throw blanket down off of the back of the couch but it only covers her legs. She doesn’t seem to care. She’s half asleep already, and Emily is half-asleep watching Lindsey fall asleep and neither of them are saying a word about it. Lindsey blinks hazily at her, starts to smile, and then she closes her eyes.

Emily rolls over and falls asleep without ever facing the TV at all.

When she wakes up she’s starving and realizes she’s woken because the apartment smells like food. Lindsey is carefully setting up a pair of paper plates on the coffee table, with three Chinese food cartons and a mess of napkins. She’s taken out real silverware, though. Emily watches Lindsey until Lindsey turns around and sees that she’s awake.

“Hi,” Lindsey says. She’s turning a little bit pink, but she’s wearing a sweatshirt inside so she’s probably just warm.

“Hey,” Emily croaks.

“Got dinner,” Lindsey says, “you were out cold. Drooling.”

Emily wipes her mouth.

“Thanks,” she says, and Lindsey smiles at her, holding out a fork.

-

Everything is normal again. Lindsey keeps thinking it over and over again while they sit cross-legged on the floor in the living room, sharing Lo Mein. It’s exactly the way it was before the World Cup and everything that came with it.

She wishes she could convince herself. But it doesn’t _feel_ the way it was before, even if they’re doing what they would normally have done. Lindsey keeps thinking about how close their knees are to touching and the way Emily’s hair fell into her face when she was asleep. She keeps thinking about how she’s gay and Emily doesn’t know. Well, Emily _does_ know, but she doesn’t know, in so many words, and Lindsey can’t tell her, because it would feel like coming onto Emily, which is not what she needs to be doing.

But it does feel weird not to share it with Emily. Emily should have been the first person she told.

“Gimme the throw pillow,” Emily says, pointing. Lindsey picks up the throw pillow and sits on it. Emily tackles her. It happens so naturally, like it always did, even if it knocks the wind out of Lindsey’s lungs. She grabs the throw pillow and holds it over her head, and Emily knocks her onto her back and straddles her, reaching. Lindsey smacks the pillow into Emily’s face and Emily gasps, mock-offended. For a moment Lindsey hesitates, thinking she’s actually done something wrong, and then Emily takes advantage of her stillness and yanks the pillow out of her hands.

Lindsey lurches upright. Emily doesn’t fall out of her lap because Lindsey has an arm around her back and her eyes on Emily’s lips. She lurches forward without thinking about it, and Emily doesn’t move, just exhales a short puff of air against Lindsey’s lips, clutching the pillow between them.

But Lindsey doesn’t do it. She lets go of Emily, who slips out of her lap.

“Sorry,” Lindsey says, for the hundredth time in the last four days.

“Um,” Emily says, “I should go to sleep.”

“Em,” Lindsey says, “I’m--”

Emily is blinking back tears and Lindsey reaches for her, wanting to fix it. When Emily flinches away from her, Lindsey feels like her chest is caving in on itself. The smell of the leftover food makes her feel sick. Emily leaves the throw pillow when she scrambles to her feet and disappears into her room, and Lindsey clutches it in her hands when she starts to cry.

She’s still crying when Emily slips out of her room to use the bathroom, but she wipes her eyes hastily and cleans up the Chinese food and puts the throw pillow back where it belongs. She’s still crying when Emily avoids her gaze and ducks back into her own room without another word. She can tell that Emily’s been crying too, and every single part of her wants to knock on Emily’s door, but she doesn’t know what she’d even say. She’s already said she’s sorry, but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t help. Saying sorry doesn’t stop her from fucking things up at every turn and saying sorry doesn’t stop her from hurting Emily, either.

Tomorrow they’ll go to Utah. The day after they’ll play a game. Not long after that they’ll be back for the victory tour, and Emily deserves to be able to enjoy all of that, and Lindsey wants nothing more than to give it to her. 

-

When Emily gets in the car with Lindsey to go to the stadium neither of them says a word. She has her mouth full with a granola bar so that she’s not tempted. Her eyes hurt the way they always do after she cries a lot, and she wonders if Lindsey looks as wrecked as she does, but she doesn’t want to check. Lindsey turns on some music that isn’t Emily’s playlist and the five minute drive feels like a half hour. 

Her locker is a mess so it takes her longer to pack up, but by the time she gets on the bus it’s too late. Lindsey is pressed against the window next to Tobin. Almost everyone else is already on the bus so they’ve all seen it and they’re all trying not to look at Emily except for Tobin, who makes apologetic eye contact with her. Lindsey definitely knows she’s standing there looking like an idiot and trying not to cry, but she doesn’t look up. 

Emily stands there until she finds the empty seat next to Caitlin. She’s praying her friend won’t say a word and finally something goes right for her: Caitlin doesn’t speak, just offers one of her earphones, and Emily takes it. 

Emily doesn’t start the game in Utah. She watches from the bench while trying to avoid looking directly at Lindsey. She twists her hands into her pinnie and when Sinc scores she leaps off of the bench, letting the roar of her teammates carry her away for the first time in days. It’s just soccer. Soccer she can do. 

Christen’s goal is beautiful but it makes Emily’s chest tight with how badly she wants to be on the field. She knows why she’s sitting, she hasn’t played a full 90 in longer than Lindsey, but she wants to be there, she wants to make a difference. She thinks she could have gotten to Christen faster. She knows that Christen wouldn’t have nutmegged her, at least not like that. Also, nobody is feeding Lindsey the ball, and Lindsey keeps setting everyone up and they keep wasting it. 

They might be fighting, or whatever it is they’re doing, but Emily knows she can get the ball up to Lindsey. And she knows that if Lindsey weren’t so focused on creating the plays she’d be scoring, and they need that against Utah, _badly_. 

When Mark finally puts her in, that’s what she focuses on: finding Lindsey. His instructions to her were to stay back, and she’s not going to fight him on it--lucky for both of them, she doesn’t need to come up far to find Lindsey’s feet. Near the end of the game, Lindsey gets two-footed and still, somehow, she finds the net to score.

While everyone else is celebrating, Emily is frozen. She wants to celebrate, but Lindsey is still down and she’s clearly hurting. She wants to go to Lindsey, but she keeps thinking about the bus, about how Lindsey wouldn’t even look at her. 

She forgets all of that when the ref doesn’t even send Corsie off for it.

“Hey!” she shouts, “hey! That’s a fucking red card! That’s an obvious red!”

She’s about to give him more when she hears Mark yell to her from the bench to calm down. Lindsey still isn’t up, and Emily fights off her trepidation to check on her. She places a hand on Lindsey’s shoulder, and Lindsey sits up, waiting for the trainer to get to them. She doesn’t look at Emily, or speak.

“At least you scored,” Emily says weakly, “we were about to draw.”

“Game’s not over,” Lindsey mumbles, but she doesn’t say anything else. Emily lets go of her shoulder and drifts back for some water, trying to decide if Lindsey’s reaction is different than it would have been before. She can’t help but wonder if she’ll be asking herself that forever.

When Corsie equalizes at the last possible second, Emily feels like she, personally, deserves it.

Half for acting like Lindsey’s goal had won the game when she knows better than to think a game is over in the 87th minute. Half because she’s on the field when the goal is scored. 

After the game, Tobin finds her before she goes to find Christen, looping an arm around Emily’s shoulders and spritzing her gently with a water bottle.

“Good game,” she says, even though they both know it wasn’t. Emily can hear the question Tobin’s not asking.

“I’m fine,” she says, “I’m okay,” and Tobin lets her go.

-

Lindsey makes eye contact with Kelley before they leave the field and she knows what’s coming. It reminds her of the look she’d get from a coach on the field when she fucked up in youth soccer or in France. Jill doesn’t do it but she’s had it happen enough times that she knows, in her gut, that she’s in trouble. And that she deserves it.

She doesn’t even listen in the locker room when they’re talking about where they’re going to go. It’s hot in Utah, but it’s a dry heat, and it reminds her of Colorado, reminds her of home and Mal, who she hasn’t spoken to since they left. She wants to go back out and lie back on the grass and sink into the field. She used to do it after practice--used to tell her mom to pick her up a half hour after practice ended, so she could go back out. Fifteen minutes of shooting practice, chasing after her one single soccer ball, and fifteen minutes of lying in the grass, pressing her fingers into the dirt, just breathing. The only quiet moments she had. Maybe just looking at it will help.

She barely rounds the corner from the locker room when Kelley catches her.

“Hey,” she says, and Lindsey stops, but she doesn’t turn around right away.

“Hey,” she says eventually, when she turns around. Kelley has always intimidated her a little bit, with her high cheekbones and severe jawline and absolute conviction in every thing that’s ever come out of her mouth. Never more than now, standing in Kelley’s stadium.

“You okay?” Kelley asks, and Lindsey swallows hard.

“Yeah,” she says, “why?”

Kelley gestures vaguely at Lindsey’s leg, and Lindsey remembers that she was fouled hard at least twice during the game, something she should definitely be more upset about.

“Oh,” she says, “yeah, I’m fine.”

“Of course you’re fine,” Kelley says, “you’re a tank. Hey, I’m glad. Listen, you wanna go for a walk?”

It’s not a suggestion. Lindsey is well aware she can’t avoid it. Still, she wonders what exactly Kelley would do if she said no. If anyone’s going to know what happened with her and Emily, it’s Kelley. And if anyone’s going to ream her for it, it’s Kelley.

Kelley takes her to a park. Lindsey folds her aching leg up underneath her to try and stretch out the muscles that are complaining. Kelley sits next to her at the picnic table instead of across from her, and Lindsey is mostly glad that it won’t feel as much like an interrogation as she knows it is. She wants to say something, to get ahead of Kelley’s lecture and exonerate herself, but she knows it’ll sound like an excuse.

“So,” Kelley says, “I guess you guys aren’t talking right now.”

Lindsey stares at her hands while Kelley stares at her.

“It’s not that black and white,” she says, “I was just--I’m trying to give her some space.”

“Why do you think she wants _space_?” Kelley asks.

“Because,” Lindsey says, “when there’s no space it gets worse.”

Kelley doesn’t say anything for a moment. She drinks her water, and the silence is actually worse, bad enough that Lindsey gets progressively more nervous until her throat is so tight that she has trouble swallowing.

“That’s an interesting theory,” Kelley says finally.

“Listen,” Lindsey says, unable to stop herself, “the last person that wants to hurt Emily is me. Nobody wants--I want her to be happy, but she’s not when we’re...I thought maybe she’d be happier if I left her alone.”

“You don’t get to just walk away from it without saying anything,” Kelley says, “even if you were right that she’d be happier without you, which I don’t think you are. You still have to, like, apologize first. Otherwise I don’t know how you think she’s supposed to get over it.”

“I did apologize,” Lindsey says, “I keep telling her I’m sorry.”

“And I’m sure you mean it,” Kelley says, “but there’s no point in apologizing if you’re just going to keep torturing her. What are you even saying you’re sorry for?”

Lindsey has to really think about it. She’s close to tears and thinking too hard about the whole saga makes it worse. She’s also pretty sure it’s illegal to be in this park after the sun goes down, but Kelley doesn’t seem to care much about that. They’re not the only ones, anyway. There’s a couple on the other side of the park on a bench deep in conversation, sharing an ice cream cone. The woman has her leg slung over her boyfriend’s knee and he has an arm around her shoulders.

“Everything,” Lindsey says, “the whole thing. For kissing her in France to begin with and then doing it again and...all of it.”

“And you never considered how that might feel for her,” Kelley says, “that you feel like kissing her to begin with was a mistake and you keep reminding her.”

“She knows it was a mistake,” Lindsey insists, “she thinks it was a mistake too.”

“And how do you know that?” Kelley asks, “you haven’t spoken to her about it, right?”

“I haven’t spoken to _anyone_ about it,” Lindsey snaps, “I told Mal I was gay, had a panic attack, and then I flew back to Portland to the apartment I share with Emily and tried to be normal because I don’t know what else to do other than say I’m sorry over and over again until someone believes me.”

“Hey,” Kelley says, reaching for her. Lindsey doesn’t brush her off but she wants to. She’s starting to cry and she hates it, and right now she hates Kelley too, and she hates _that_.

“Hey,” Kelley says again, putting an arm around Lindsey’s shoulders, “I think everyone believes you. I know Emily believes you. But you have to know she’s had a thing for you for a while, so that thing you think of as the biggest mistake you’ve ever made was like, the best night of her life. The trophy and then the girl she’s had a crush on forever made a move. Right? So hearing you apologize over and over for it doesn’t feel great.”

Lindsey sniffs. She lets herself really think about it and she watches the couple finish their ice cream cone. Emily would never share her ice cream like that. At least not without smashing it into Lindsey’s face first.

“It was the best night of my life, too,” she mumbles. She’s not talking about the same night, though. She’s talking about LA. She keeps remembering Emily scrambling off the bed to turn the lights off just because she could tell that Lindsey feeling seen in full light was too much.

“But,” Kelley prompts, rubbing her thumb across Lindsey’s shoulder. 

“But I thought she wanted me to apologize,” Lindsey says. “I felt like I needed to apologize.”

“For starting it?” Kelley asks. Lindsey shakes her head. She drops her face into her hands, pressing her palms against her temples, and Kelley lets go of her. It takes a few deep breaths for Lindsey to even formulate what she wants to say, but since she came out to Mal she’s gotten over talking around things like this. She might as well just say them. She’s already said what she thought she never could. 

“For doing it wrong,” she says eventually, without lifting her head. “All of it. I couldn’t be normal about it. I messed it up immediately.”

Kelley doesn’t say anything. Lindsey lifts her head just because she needs to see the look on Kelley’s face. It’s better than she expected—Kelley has softened, and she’s looking at Lindsey like she should go on, like she’s on the right track. 

“Emily doesn’t deserve that,” Lindsey says softly, “she deserves a real girlfriend.”

Kelley frowns and Lindsey’s stomach drops. 

“I don’t know what that means,” Kelley offers, almost-kindly. 

“A girl who’s going to post her all over all her social media,” Lindsey says, “and not worry about it. And hold her hand in public and not...freak out all the time.”

“You don’t even know if she wants that,” Kelley tells her. Lindsey blinks. It’s not something she considered. She thought that’s what _everyone_ wanted.

“Also,” Kelley says, “you’re in control of whether or not you freak out all the time. But, listen. You have to do something one way or another. Either you’re doing this or you’re not, but you have to choose.”

“I know,” Lindsey says. She does know. She’s been trying to choose. It’s not like this hasn’t occurred to her. She’s a little frustrated with Kelley’s tone, but she also feels like she deserves it.

“I don’t think you do know,” Kelley says. “You’re breaking her heart.”

Lindsey thinks about the look on Emily’s face when she flinched away from Lindsey’s touch in their living room and knows that it’s true, whether she wants to admit it or not. And that’s only since she _knew_. How many times has she hurt Emily without meaning to, without even realizing it? And all along Emily tolerating it, and loving her anyway, still being her best friend.

“I’ll fix it,” Lindsey says, more to herself than to Kelley.

“Good,” Kelley says, “because we have to play together again like, soon.”

Lindsey doesn’t say anything to that. She’s still thinking about how long Emily’s been suffering without saying anything. She wants a timeline--she wants a list of things to apologize for. She must look perplexed, because Kelley rubs a hand between her shoulders again.

“Okay,” Kelley says, “hug time. Come here.”

It’s an awkward hug, both of them still seated at the picnic table, but it does help. Lindsey closes her eyes and lets herself believe that she can make things better. Even if she can’t be what Emily wants, she can be better than she was. When she opens her eyes again, the couple on the bench is gone.

-

The next time Emily is alone with Lindsey they’re getting back in the car to go to their apartment and they haven’t spoken since the game the day before. It feels like the emotional equivalent of a juice cleanse. That is, unfulfilling, but something she feels like she’s supposed to be proud of. 

“Em,” Lindsey says, “let’s go somewhere.”

“Um,” Emily says, taken aback by the nickname, “I was just going to go back to bed.”

“Ten minutes,” Lindsey says, “just give me ten minutes.”

“Okay,” Emily says. She’s expecting Lindsey to pull out of the parking lot, but she doesn’t. She reaches up to touch her necklace—the one that Emily has too, with the stadium’s coordinates on it— and then she turns the car off. 

“C’mon,” she says, and Emily already knows where they’re going. 

She feels the dread settle in her chest while she follows Emily up the different sets of stairs. It seems like they’re pretending things are fine again, and Emily is too tired to keep up the facade like this. She’s been doing it too long, and she knows too much now, too much about the things she wants. Knowing how Lindsey’s lips feel makes every sentence Lindsey says to her feel like pins and needles all over. 

But she didn’t say no. She still _can’t_ say no to Lindsey. They end up in the 200s, as high up as they can get in the stands. Lindsey perches on the edge of a seat. They’re not supposed to be up there but they’ve done it before, usually after a bad game, while the stadium staff is still cleaning. Lindsey has always liked to be in the empty stadium. It usually gives Emily the creeps, but today she doesn’t mind it. She’s too busy noticing the half an inch between Lindsey’s knee and hers. She doesn’t look at the field, just watches Lindsey look at it. The height makes her nervous without a crowd of bodies around her. 

“I know I’ve been apologizing a lot,” Lindsey murmurs. Emily feels like she might pass out. 

“It’s fine,” Emily says, “we don’t have to talk about it, you don’t have to keep apologizing.”

“I’m not,” Lindsey says. And then, folding her hands in her lap, “I want to talk about it.”

Emily isn’t convinced. 

“I’m not sorry,” Lindsey says, “I don’t think...that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I was sorry for starting it because I wasn’t. I meant that I was sorry for running away after and not saying anything.”

“Oh,” Emily says. She props her feet up on the seat in front of her and tucks her hands under the backs of her thighs. “Okay,” she continues, “apology accepted.”

“And because I didn’t do any of this right,” Lindsey continues, like she hasn’t heard Emily at all. 

“Any of what?” Emily asks, trying to sound appropriately interested instead of like she’s hanging on Lindsey’s every word, every breath. She is, though, and when Lindsey moves her leg and Emily can almost feel her skin it sends her spiraling out of her self-induced Lindsey cleanse back to where she was before, immediately. If she had ever even actually crawled out of it. She’s not sure anymore. 

Lindsey turns her head and makes eye contact with Emily. Emily realizes it’s the first time Lindsey has looked up from the field since they got there, and having Lindsey’s undivided attention gives her goosebumps immediately. 

“Being with you,” Lindsey says, “I did it totally backwards. I fucked it up. And that’s something I’m sorry for. But,” she pauses and chews her lips, and Emily remembers Lindsey biting _her_ lip, “I still...want to. Be with you. If that’s what you want.”

Emily’s mouth is dry. She wishes she had long sleeves to pull over her hands but she has nothing to fidget with.

“When you say that,” she says carefully, “you mean, like—“

“I want to be your girlfriend,” Lindsey says, and Emily is so dizzy that she has to clutch her knees. She knows that she’s smiling, though, because her cheeks hurt. Lindsey’s not done but Emily would let her talk forever after that. 

“I don’t know how to do it,” Lindsey says, blushing and breaking eye contact to look down at her hands, “I’m not sure I’ll be any good at it. But I want to try. For you. If—“

“If I want,” Emily finishes for her, giddy. Lindsey is still so pink when she looks up again. 

“Yeah,” Lindsey says. “I’m terrified. But not of you.”

Emily reaches out to touch her. Her hands are shaking when she does, but she steadies them by unrumpling Lindsey’s hood on her hoodie, then bringing one hand up to Lindsey’s cheek. It’s so much that all she can do is brush Lindsey’s cheekbones with her fingertips. 

“This doesn’t scare you?” she asks. She always thought it did. She thought of it every time they kissed. There were so many times she didn’t touch Lindsey the way she wanted to because she was afraid to scare Lindsey away. And then waking up alone, having it confirmed, or so she thought. But maybe Lindsey really wasn’t running from her. 

“No,” Lindsey murmurs. Her eyes drop to Emily’s lips. Emily has a hard time really believing it until Lindsey twists in her seat and kisses her. She ends up holding Emily by her elbows and Emily holds Lindsey’s face in her hands and they kiss in the upper deck of Providence Park until they have to pull apart to breathe. When Lindsey presses their foreheads together, Emily laughs breathlessly. She finds Lindsey’s hands and threads their fingers together. 

“Don’t think this means I’m gonna let you win at Mario Kart,” Emily says, and Lindsey wrestles a hand free to pinch Emily’s knee. 

“As if you have to let me,” she says, and then Emily kisses her again, just because she can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...there may be an epilogue coming. 🧐
> 
> Thank you guys so much for all your kind comments! I love reading about the moments you liked or hearing that you’re excited to see where it goes, it makes my day. I hope the ending was as satisfying to read as it was to write!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing changes even though everything has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's really short but I wanted an epilogue so here it is! Thanks again everyone for coming along for the ride!!

“This is my favorite spot in LA,” Mal says. 

“How many times have you even _been_ here?” Rose asks, “you’re making it sound like you’re from the 90210 cast.”

“That’s in Beverly Hills,” Emily says, taking her seat next to Lindsey. Everyone stares at her. Under the table, Lindsey places her hand just above Emily’s knee. 

“Beverly Hills is a suburb of LA,” Rose says witheringly, “you uncultured swine.”

Mal and Sam dissolve into giggles. Lindsey doesn’t laugh but Emily can tell she wants to from the size of her smile. She doesn’t even realize they’re grinning at each other until Mal speaks again. 

“You guys,” she says “gross.”

“I didn’t even do anything,” Lindsey says. Her hand is still on Emily’s leg. 

“You wanna see gross,” Emily says, “we can show you gross.”

“Stop trying to change the subject,” Rose insists, “we need to address the fact that you don’t know basic geography more than we need to know the nuances of your sex lives.”

“Knowing the suburbs of LA isn’t _basic geography_ ,” Emily insists. 

Under the table, she holds the hand that was on her leg and cradles it in her lap. Lindsey doesn’t pull away, and nobody notices, or if they do, they don’t care. 

And Lindsey, tracing the lines in Emily’s palm with her pointer finger, has never been less afraid.


End file.
